Document editors permit a document author to create and modify electronic documents such as word processing documents, spreadsheet documents, multimedia presentations, images, and sounds. Oftentimes, the author of a document may want to send the document to one or more reviewers to solicit comment and/or modifications to the document. Electronic mail (email) provides a convenient and commonly used mechanism for sending such documents to reviewers.
One of the most common document collaboration processes is document reviewing. Users typically perform document reviewing by using either an automated document management system or by manually routing copies of a document to potential reviewers.
Generally, a review cycle is considered to be the review process beginning with the author's transmitting a duplicate of an original document (or a link to the original document) to one or more reviewers and ending with the merging of the last reviewer's changes into the original document. The review cycle is typically begun by a trigger. A document author can trigger the beginning of a review cycle by choosing to send the original document to a recipient by email. This command is typically available in the menu structure of most document editors and/or email clients. Typically, the author can choose whether to send the document as an attachment or a link. The review cycle can also be triggered by an author selecting to send an original document for review within the context of a document management system.
Manual document reviewing involves an author's sending to potential reviewers a document either as an attachment to an email or as a link to a document maintained in a shared document location (e.g., on a common server). In the case where the document is sent as an attachment, the reviewer reads and edits the document and then returns the document to the author as an attachment to a reply email. In this case, the author receives an edited document for each reviewer that returns an attachment. The author is required to merge the changes from each of the reviewed documents into the original document and reconcile any conflicting changes.
In the case where the original document (i.e., the document created by the author) is a single document at a location on the server, each reviewer must access the original document and modify it. This reduces the necessity to merge changes into the original document, because the changes are actually made to the original document. However, this process also requires that only one reviewer can work on the document at a time. This review process is often not conducive with the users' need for an efficient and timely review cycle.
In the case where the document is managed within an automated document management system, the document management system will typically permit simultaneous editing of a document within the system, and will perform change merging automatically. However, most users do not employ document management systems as they are expensive and unwieldy for smaller organizations. Moreover, document management systems typically require the installation of a special kind of server.
A document editor may permit a sender to send a file to a recipient as either an attachment to an email note (in conjunction with an email client), or as a “link” to a shared disk location. As used herein, the term “link” refers to a reference, such as a uniform resource locator (URL), which points to the disk location where the file is stored. A link is typically “hot” or “active,” such that when the recipient clicks on the link when executing the appropriate application program, the application program will attempt to automatically retrieve the file from its shared disk location.
Document editors typically interact with an email application program in order to create a new email note. The document author may instruct the document editor or the email application program to send a document file to a reviewer by email. The email application program may then create a copy of the document file and attach the copy to the new email note. The sender may then complete the mail note by, for example, indicating the recipient's email address and typing a message into the body of the email note. Thus, a copy of the document file will be sent to the recipient as an attachment to the email file.
Document editors also can typically interact with an email application program to send a link to a document authored in the document editor. The email application program creates a link to the shared document location of the file and inserts the link into the body of a new email note. The desktop application may also insert the link into a “link file” that is sent as an attachment to the new email note. The link file contains the link and not the actual document file that the sender intends for the recipient to access. Again, the sender may complete the email note by, for example, indicating the recipient's email address and typing a message into the body of the email note.
Unfortunately, existing document editors and email application programs do not provide an automated review cycle. That is, the user is required to determine the status of a document in a review cycle. The user must determine whether merging a reviewed document and an original document is appropriate. The user must also determine which reviewing tools to display at that stage of the review cycle and then, the user must manually access those tools.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a document review system that does not require a specialized server and can support either attachment-based or link-based document collaboration to automate a review cycle by automatically providing reviewing tools in a context-sensitive manner.